Chapter Fifteen
Deadly Tit-for-Tat
In Athens, a senior BSO commander named Abu Zaiad heard a radio reports coming out of Beirut that the Israelis had launched a commando raid on his organization’s senior leadership. Since arriving in Athens, he ’had been very careful to mask his movements with lots of counter-surveillance techniques. He ’had stayed in his hotel room as much as possible and only went out when he absolutely had to do so. But when he heard the radio report, he lost his composure and bolted out of the hotel to find the nearest newspaper stand. He bought several papers and was engrossed in reading them when a big large Greek man blocked his path. He Abu Zaiad politely tried to get around him, paying the man little heed. Instead, the Greek man barred his path again. Annoyed, it took several moments for him to disentangle himself from the rude individual.
That orchestrated delay gave a Mossad hit squad just enough time to plant a bomb in Zaiad’s hotel room. When he returned to it, the Israelis called him to confirm he was actually on sighte. Then they blew him apart. Another BSO leader could be scratched off the Wrath of God Squads’ list.
The Israelis had BSO on the run, but they were not about to let go of their stranglehold. For several years, the Mossad had pursued a deadly terrorist named Mohammed Boudia. Boudia was an Algerian who had cut his teeth during his country’s war of liberation against France. He specialized in sabotage, but was caught and imprisoned in France for three years. When the war ended in 1962, the French released him, and he returned to Algeria briefly. After a coup, he went into exile back in France, where the KGB recruited him and sent him back to the Soviet Union for further training. He emerged a capable and very elusive master of the shadow war. In the years that followed, he master minded attacks on oil refineries in Trieste and Rotterdam for the PFLP.
In 1972, the Mossad picked up intelligence that suggested Boudia had split with the PFLP and joined Salameh as BSO’s head of operations in France. Wanted by the Italians, Dutch and Swiss, he seemed to live a charmed life in France, where the authorities did not have much heart in pursuing him. That left him free to carry out further smuggling and arms running operations, and he later planned the assassination of the Syrian radio journalist Khader Kanou.
Boudia was typical of the BSO leaders of that era. Erudite, artistic and intellectual, his outward persona was of a man who loved the theater. The Mossad came to consider him the most dangerous Black September operative in Europe next to Salameh.
In May, 1973, the Israelis dispatched a team of agents to Paris to track down Boudia once and for all. They knew he had one key weakness: he had a penchant for women. The Mossad team decided to watch several prominent females who were part of the left-wing intelligentsia in Paris, hoping that perhaps Boudia would pay one of them a visit.
The ploy worked. With great tactical patience, the surveillance operation picked up Boudia’s trail when he showed up at a visiting female law professor’s apartment. They prepared to strike as soon as he left the building, but he never reappeared. Puzzled, the hit squad could not figure out how he’ had slipped away.
They maintained a vigil on the apartment for the next month and watched Boudia arrive multiple times. Yet, he never reappeared in the morning. Several blond and brunette females usually left for work or errands or breakfast in the post-dawn hours, but never did the surveillance never detected Boudia’s departure.
The Israeli agents finally figured out what was going on. Boudia had been a theater manager and actor back in Algeria. After his amorous encounters with the law professor, he ’would dress in drag and slip away every morning with none of the Mossad operatives the wiser.
Catching him became a crucial priority. Fragments of information flowed in from various sources that indicated he was about to launch a series of attacks on Israeli embassies around Europe. To carry them out, he and BSO had been actively forming alliance with other radical left-wing groups throughout the Old World.
A tip led the surveillance team to stake out a metro station in the Paris subway system. For days, they studied the bustling crowds until they finally spotted him, heavily disguised at the EÉtoile station beneath the Arc de Trioumphe --. Boudia was a true master of theatrical make up, and the team almost missed him. Nevertheless, they followed his trail and watched him get into a car. When the agents ran his tags, they were astonished to discover that this ultra-careful terrorist had actually registered his vehicle in his own name.
The car became Boudia’s liability. On June 28, 1973, he parked it deep in Paris’ famed Latin Quarter near another one of his lovers’ apartments. While he was upstairs engaged with her, the Mossad team wired his little sedan with explosives. The next morning, when he left her apartment, he approached his car very carefully. He checked the wheels, bent low and studied the chassis. When he climbed inside, the Wrath of God squad detonated the bomb and watched as the most dangerous man in Europe burned to a crisp inside his metal Achilles’ heel.
Three nights later, Joe Alon bled out in Dvora’s arms in the front yard of their Trent Street house.
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In July 1973, the Israelis developed intelligence which suggested Salameh and Black September were about to launch an attack of some kind in Sweden. The Mossad dispatched additional assets to Northern Europe, and through a series of surveillance operations several agents on the ground thought they had located Salameh himself in Lillehammer, Norway.
On July 21, 1973, a Wrath of God Squad tailed Salameh to a local movie theater, where he watched a World War II espionage film called Where Eagles Dare with a beautiful blond Norwegian woman. After the show, the two stepped out into the street and began walking home.
The two-man hit team struck with savage speed. In a white Mazda, they rolled up behind the couple. The two Mossad agents dismounted and went after their target. Salameh spun around just in time to see the agents draw their .22 caliber Berrettas. “No!” he shouted in vain. The assassins pumped his thin body full of bullets then fled back to the waiting car. They left their target bleeding out in the street while the woman wailed for help.
Days later, the Mossad discovered the agents had made a grievous error. The man killed that night was not Salameh at all, but a struggling Moroccan waiter who had emigrated to Norway in search of a job and a better life. He had married a local woman and was just starting a family. His wife, the blond who cried over his body as his lifeblood drained from him, had been seven months pregnant at the time of the assassination.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the Norwegian authorities caught and jailed six of the Mossad’s agents involved in the assassination. One of them was captured at an Israeli diplomat’s apartment, which established a clear link between them and the Israeli government. Under interrogation, two of the most junior and inexperienced agents broke. They provided not only details of the Lillehammer operation, but vast amounts of information related to how the Mossad functioned in Europe as well. Their revelations forced the Israelis to withdraw agents, abandon safe houses, extract informants and change phone numbers all over the Continent. The Mossad’s ability to chase Black September terrorists had just been dealt a crippling blow.[1]
Worse, when the international news media learned of what had happened in Norway, there was a mass outpouring of outrage and hostile press towards the Israelis. Diplomatic relations between the Jewish state and much of Europe soured. Gold Meir, who had feared all along consequences like these should these dark world assassinations ever come to light, called off the pursuit of Black September’s last surviving leaders, at least for the time being.
When That fall, the Yom Kippur War broke out. that fall, Tthe Israelis fought for their national survival, and all efforts, both their conventional and shadow world forcescovert were committed totally to the fray. The error in
Norway and the 1973 war may have given the last Black September leaders breathing space to escape and continue their plotting, but the Israelis did not forget. It took them years, but they eventually settled the score that started at Munich. Abu Iyad and Ali Hassan Salameh lived on borrowed time after Lillehammer.
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After the brutal assassinations and counter-assassinations of 1973, Black September virtually collapsed. The Red Prince’s stature had risen ever higher in Arafat’s mind, a development that rankled Abu Iyad. A struggle for power broke out until Iyad finally gave Arafat an ultimatum: Salameh or him. The PLO leader chose Salameh and made him the head of his personal security detail.
In 1974, Yasser Arafat flew to New York to address the United Nations. [2]He strode into the main chamber on November 13th carrying an olive branch in one hand and a gun in the other. Before he even spoke, the UN delegations broke into applause that rose to a tremendous crescendo, much to the disgust of the Israeli envoy.
Salameh traveled with Arafat to New York and virtually never left his side. As the head of his security team, he worked closely with the New York Police Department, the Diplomatic Security Service, and other U.S. governmental agencies to ensure Arafat’s safety.
Five years later, in January 1979, the Israelis finally caught up to the Red Prince. After an effective pre-operational surveillance mission, the Mossad determined that Salameh had let his guard down. He ’had married a former beauty queen, who was now pregnant. Together, they lived in an apartment in Snoubra, one of Beirut’s nicer districts. All of those tricks of the trade he ’had used to evade the Wrath of God Squads in 1973 seemed long forgotten now. Salameh had, having traded the constant movement and paranoia of a master terrorist for domestic harmony. As the Mossad team observed him, they quickly discovered he ’had sunk into a serene routine. They soon figured out when and where Salameh would go during his days, and mapped out the streets he frequented the most.
On January 22, 1973, the Red Prince climbed into a Chevrolet station wagon and was driven down Rue Verdun. His vehicle turned onto Rue Madame Curie and passed what looked to be an average blue Volkswagen parked by the curb. From a window overlooking the street, a female Mossad agent pressed a remote control in her hand and watched the Volkswagen explode. The full force of the blast broadsided Salameh’s station wagon. In a flash, the original bomb triggered the Chevy’s gas tank, and the vehicle blew up. Flames shot up through the neighborhood as debris—including body parts, rained down all along the street. There were no survivors.
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Abu Iyad survived to write a book, later settling in Tunis after the 1982 withdrawal of the PLO from Lebanon. In his later years, he moderated his tone and began to advocate for a face-to-face dialogue with Israel. Though Arafat eased him out of his inner circle in the 70’s, he remained personally loyal to the PLO chief. In 1991, he was assassinated in Tunis. Most sources suggest he was killed either by an agent loyal to terrorist Abu Nidal, or by a faction within the PLO. However, there is evidence to suggest that the Israelis finished him off with a commando team that slipped ashore in rubber Zodiacs in an operation reminiscent of Spring of Youth eighteen years before.
With Abu Iyad’s murder in 1991, the last of Black September’s leaders had been wiped out. The loop had been closed, and aside from Arafat himself, it seemed that by the early 90’s nobody was left alive who could confirm or deny Black September’s role in Joe Alon’s death.
A few years after Abu Iyad fell to his assassin’s bullets, my superiors within the DSS assigned me to guard Yasser Arafat when he returned to New York to speak at the UN. We provided close security for him and watched as various dignitaries and businessmen came to his hotel room to kiss his ring. Most brought with them bundles of cash that they deposited in a big garbage can by the hotel room door.
Arafat spent his time in New York either in his hotel room or out attending meetings. Watching him, I was struck by the reverence in which all his visitors showered on the Palestinian leader. I also noticed that his personal security detail was almost as good as our DSS agents. Thorough, vigilant and fiercely loyal to Arafat, their professionalism shined through in all of their actions and tactics. Once, I recalled watching dinner arrive in the hotel room. When Arafat’s plate was served, one of his bodyguard suddenly stepped forward, grabbed it and switched it with the man seated next to his boss. As he did so, the security agent glanced up at me to see my expression of surprise. He gave me a sly smile then melted away from the table. If Arafat’s food had been poisoned, the guest sitting next to him would have ingested it.
Though he was long in his grave, Salameh’s legacy existed in that room. He was the first one to truly professionalize Arafat’s personal protection. Fatah-17 had grown into a security force that ranked as one of the best I’d ever seen during my career in the DSS.
As we worked with them, I wanted to ask Arafat about Salameh and Joe Alon. Did the Red Prince orchestrate the Israeli war hero’s execution that July night in Bethesda?
To this day, I kick myself for not approaching him. Instead, I did my job and continued to wonder if BSO really did have a role in Alon’s death. Opportunities like that one come along only once; I let it slip away and it has haunted me ever since. Of course, Arafat probably never would have told me --, an American government agent of the American government --, anything about the event. Still, I wonder if he would have thrown me some bone or tidbit that would have shed light on this case.